Now that the Chase is all but set, and will officially be after this weekend, teams who are on the outside looking in have the opportunity to start working towards next season.  With no championship left to fight for, teams can start experimenting and thinking outside the box to find some way to both fight for wins this season and learn for 2011.

Since NASCAR effectively banned testing a few seasons ago in the name of cost savings, teams have had to get creative to find ways to improve their cars and setups.  They use everything from wind tunnel time, shaker rigs, non-sanctioned tracks, and computer simulations.  What being out of the Chase means, is that teams now have ten or eleven race weekends they can use almost as mini test sessions.  They can try different engine configurations, aerodynamic changes, and chassis setups.  It will allow them to experiment and make those notebooks full of information a little bigger.  While the Chasers are focusing on being fast now, everyone else can gather data for next season.

Another area in which teams can (and some have already started doing) is throwing in some different pit crew guys.  Teams are always looking for that right combination of guys that will consistently be quick on pit road, and with less on the line, taking some chances in this area over the final few races of the season can help.  Instead of just watching guys work together in a practice setting, putting new guys together during actual race conditions can give crew chiefs and pit crew coaches a much more accurate view of what a guy and a team are capable of.  It can also be a great opportunity for teams to get some younger guys some valuable race experience.

Especially for those teams that have struggled over the course of the season, there really aren’t a ton of reasons why they shouldn’t spend then next several weeks trying to learn for 2011.  Without chances to win the title or races, there really isn’t much else to lose.  And who knows, maybe they will hit on one or two small things that could push them over the hump for next season.

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The idea of multi-car qualifying is nothing new to motorsports.  Our readers who follow Formula 1 racing (or other open wheel series) know what I’m talking about.  It is however, a fairly new system for NASCAR.  We’ve seen the Nationwide Series use the process for road course races over the last few years, and this season the Truck Series has used it at Pocono and will again use it at Kentucky this weekend.  CBS Sports reported on Thursday that NASCAR may be considering implementing multi-car qualifying for both the NNS and Cup Series on a regular basis.  Is anyone else wondering why?

It appears that the main reason this system would be adopted by all the NASCAR series is to speed up the qualifying process.  That’s fine, but I didn’t realize there was a problem with how quickly qualifying happened.  This appears to me as something that isn’t necessarily broken, but NASCAR wants to fix it anyway.

Personally, my biggest objection with the multi-car qualifying idea is how fair this would be for everyone involved.  We’ve seen plenty of times in other forms of racing where one driver’s bonzai qualifying lap was ruined by another driver in the name of strategy.  With so much at stake, and the measures that teams go to in terms of finding an advantage, it isn’t crazy to think that this could happen in NASCAR.  Single car qualifying runs eliminate any possibility of tampering by another team.

On top of that, what if a driver blows an engine while qualifying, and the other driver on track drives into the oil left behind and wrecks their primary car?  A team could potentially have their weekend ruined before the race even starts.  How is that fair?  Under the system we have now, this would never happen, because NASCAR has the ability to clean the track in between qualifying runs.

With the current state of the sport I realize that NASCAR is trying to find ways to improve the racing and get more people to not only attend races, but also to watch on TV.  To me though, implementing multi-car qualifying will cause more problems then it actually fixes.

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Were you booing or cheering Friday night?

There is nothing like a crowd at Bristol displaying their like, or in this case dislike, for a driver. Their opinion is deafening. And honestly, it was fantastic.

No matter your feelings toward Kyle Busch, chances are you aren’t indifferent about him. And he’s exactly what NASCAR needs right now – a polarizing figure who can win.

For all the improvements NASCAR has made to the sport in the last several months, there really isn’t anything they can do get moments like that – most especially, there is nothing they can do to cultivate drivers like that.

Ed Hinton wrote a great column last week about his search for what plagued NASCAR fans. His determination? NASCARmyalgia. You all have aches, but no one really knows for sure what the problem is. It’s funny, but it rings so completely true.

I think moments like Friday night are a good remedy, but we need more guys like Kyle Busch – that is more guys who are willing to express themselves and relish the position they have in the sport, and then back it up with wins – to do that on Sunday. Fans desperately want and need drivers they can cheer for, and against right now.

Thankfully for us NASCAR is allowing drivers to show a little personality on track, which is translating to personality off the track. While the action this weekend was unfortunately on Friday night, the conflict was apparent on Saturday night. Did you hear the driver intros? Awesome.

Right now Kyle is injecting a little bit of spice into a sport that desperately needs it. While I think it’s hard to disagree that the racing is some of the best its ever been, it’s hard to say, personality wise, things are as good as they could be.

Though things aren’t perfect right now, they never have been, and they really never will be, these moments of dogged fight, and boiled over frustrations really make it all worth while.

Thank goodness we’ve got a guy like Kyle Busch to help bring some drama into our beloved sport. Now where is everybody else?

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It’s official… NASCAR has released the schedules for the 2011 season, and seasons of speculation are finally over – both Kentucky and Kansas got their long-anticipated Cup dates.

I’ve never been the biggest advocated for giving Kentucky a Cup date and Kansas a second Cup date. They’re really just more of the same. That said, I’m glad NASCAR, ISC and SMI are bringing racing to fans who appreciate it.

Though I haven’t been the biggest proponent of adding dates to those two tracks, I (and TC) have been a proponent of taking a date away from California. The racing is never very good and for whatever reason the crowds just couldn’t be maintained. Some markets just cant support two dates.

I believe that’s the story in Atlanta. Though I like the track and the racing it produces, it too was having issues with attendance. From a business prospective it made more sense giving its second date to Kentucky – a place I think will be able to support the event.

Other welcome news was that SMI didn’t pull a date from New Hampshire – I thought for sure Bruton would use the police issue in Loudon to give Las Vegas a second date. The man in the gawdy sunglasses surprises.

Overall, while the 2011 schedule does bring us changes, there aren’t really a ton of surprises. As always, the internal politics of NASCAR, ISC and SMI keep the possibility of changes to a minimum. I’d certainly like to see a Chase that was more representative of the whole schedule, but I’m good with what is hopefully just the beginning of a truly improved schedule in NASCAR.

Some Thoughts on the Truck Series Schedule

With 24 scheduled events for the 2011 season, and another one TBA, the Truck Series  schedule is much improved over this year’s. Gone is the three week break between Daytona and Atlanta, and the two week break between Atlanta and Martinsville. Those successive breaks were a little excessive – not to mention they killed the momentum of the season.

There are a couple of two week breaks early on in 2011, and a month long break in the middle of the summer, but all in all they’ve done a much better job keeping the series flowing.

As far as filling that TBA date, why not have a triple-header at Richmond in September? There might be some logistical issues with the haulers, but who wouldn’t love to see the trucks make their RIR return?

I’m not sure what NASCAR is working on for that date, but my plea is that they keep them at a short track.

And finally a couple of disappointing spots. Pocono is back on the schedule. I think we all know my thoughts on that. And I don’t really understand the reasoning for moving the Phoenix date. It’s going to be weird for them to have an off-weekend before the season-finale at Homestead – and we’ve had such great late season showdowns.

What are your thoughts on Kentucky and Kansas and all three schedules for the 2011 season?

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Kevin Conway doesn’t have a ride. And his season up to this point has been… well not good. Despite the less than impressive stats, and a now unclear future, Conway will very likely go into the NASCAR record books as the best rookie of 2010 – the Raybestos Rookie of the Year. Unfortunately, the winner by default.

Conway started 2010 driving the #37 for Front Row Motorsports – his home until last week. His competition through the first 10 races of this season for the ROY was Terry Cook. Cook qualified for just three of ten races he attempted in a very underfunded Whitney Motorsports ride before he and the team parted ways.

That left just Conway, the only full-time competitor, competing for ROY honors this season. For his part, Conway has said he is excited about winning his race of one.

For me, all of a sudden my hard work created some opportunities and now to find myself in the middle of the Rookie of the Year championship in the Sprint Cup Series is beyond comprehension in many ways

Nevermind it was clever maneuvering of points, and start-and-parks that kept Conway going for as long as he did. Through 21 races he had an average start of 40th, and average finish of 31.6 – he finished on the lead lap in just three of those races at Daytona, Watkins Glen and Sonoma.

For all intents and purposes though, Conway is the best rookie of this season. Though I don’t know if I’d be too stoked about winning a competition where I was the only competitor, I guess it’s something.

Going back to late last season the talk was how there might not even be a rookie class in the Cup Series. While that didn’t occur, we did end up with the weakest class since perhaps 1958 (I say that only because the winner, Shorty Rollins, was the lone competitor).

Now thanks to a bad economy, an increasing lack of sponsor interest in funding development drivers and plethora of other reasons, we now find ourselves in the same situation we were in last year – the prospect of a season without a ROY participant in the Cup Series.

While it really isn’t that big of a deal, it’s kind of sad to not see a competition for an award whose winners include the sport’s greatest drivers. The award deserves better than this. The sport deserves better than this. But it is what it is.

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It’s not often I see press releases that truly catch my attention. I mean something beyond the standard pre-race and post-race (which are both useful enough). The last couple of weeks I’ve seen two that had me talking – one for the good, the other for the bad.

Something different? Go Red Bull!

This one was a first – and something I’ve been advocating for for a long time. Why not get creative with your communication efforts? Everybody puts out the same formulaic pre and post-race releases with a ridiculous amount of spin. We get it, you’re trying to turn a 30th place finish into a positive thing.

Lest we be disappointed by yet another post-race we’re probably not going to read, someone finally did something about it. Thank you Red Bull!

You may have seen this – it made the rounds on twitter – after Pocono the folks over at Red Bull, instead of doing a recap of the race that we all saw, injected some humor into their release with some fun facts.

The first bit on their release read:

Pocono Raceway is like the Death Star when it comes to rain. There’s some sort of triangular tractor beam that seems to suck in ominous clouds.

Haha. What? The Death Star? It continues like that, but I had to finish reading. They even managed to sneak in some information about their teams in there. All in all, not bad. Check out their turn by turn Watkins Glen post-race – equally entertaining.

The beauty of this is, they’re not running great, but they’ve got people buzzing about something positive. A win-win for the team.

The clock starts now to see how fast someone steals this from them – or tries to outdo them.

Bad luck? Or the funding fell out?

Generally start-and-park teams don’t put out pre and post race releases. It’s obvious why. But I found an exception.

Michelle Theriault has been running a start-and-park for Andy Hillenburg’s Fast Track Racing. After Theriault’s first race at ORP the sponsor’s marketing company (yes, a start-and-park with a sponsor) put out a release claiming it was bad luck that forced Theriault out of the race.

From the drop of the green flag, Theriault fought a tight condition which inhibited her climb through the field. The crew planned on making adjustments on the No. 48 ProGold Lubricants Chevrolet, but bad luck struck on lap 52. A kink in a line going to the radiator caused the motor to overheat, which relegated the rookie driver to a 32nd-place finish.

A kink in the line? Bad luck? Sounds to me, as Michael McDowell put it on his twitter page a few weeks ago, the funding fell out on the front stretch.

What’s worse than being a start-and-park? Trying to pretend you’re not one. This was just plain insulting to anyone who read it – and it all but guaranteed I wouldn’t be looking at another of their releases.

Luckily, though they’ve been putting out pre-races, they quit doing the post-race.

Sometimes its just best not to say anything at all.

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Before I begin, I just really need to get this off my chest…I told you so.

For the last week some in the NASCAR media have been trying to turn fleeting anger between Juan Pablo Montoya and Brian Pattie into the feud of the century…the ‘beginning of the end?’ some asked. I think Sunday proved how wrong that was.

Now the storyline is that this win has repaired that rift. Convenient how some are able to craft this story to make it look like they were right all along. 

The truth is, if any rift existed in the first place, that win probably wouldn’t have occurred. Chemistry is a delicate and important thing in racing, and when it’s off, or not working, wins don’t happen. This wasn’t the first time JPM has been angry at Brian Pattie, and lets be honest, it won’t be the last.

These ‘much ado about nothing’ storylines have plagued EGR over the last few seasons. It’s true there have been struggles, and layoffs. And things haven’t always been peachy in Concord, Indianapolis or Pittsburgh. But the dire predictions haven’t generally matched up with reality.

And now Chip Ganassi and his organization are proving that.

For most in motorsports, success is very cyclical. Sometimes you’re on top, sometimes you’re not. Such is the case with Ganassi and EGR. It was not so long ago they were laying off a third of the organization, and we’re at best a well funded back marker.

Today, EGR is a three time winner in 2010 - a distinction that puts them just behind Gibbs and Hendrick on the season - and consistently competitive (though the Chase is not likely this season).

In a sport dominated by massive teams they’re an anomaly among their peers. I saw someone had been trying to bring the term ’boutique team’ to the lexicon to describe EGR. It’s not a bad description – they’re small, efficient and good quality. It hasn’t really caught on, but it was a valiant effort.

Spend much time around this sport, or really any sport and it’s interesting to see how things change, evolve and grow (or flop). Yesterday’s titans are tomorrow’s old news. From the depths of two years ago when some were predicting the end of CGR to where they are today, EGR is on the upswing of this cycle, and Chip Ganassi is a very happy man.

As the great Mark Twain said, “rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.”

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